3. The Role of Socioeconomic Background and Prior Achievement for Students’ Perception
3.7 Limitations
Our results should be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, based on the study sample, the issue of generalizability arises. Although our large sample of German secondary schools and the use of internationally recognized instruments to evaluate teacher support are major strengths of this study design, differences in school grade levels and school tracks may still influence the results. Our findings therefore may not be universal, yet, we believe that they resonate with fundamental human judgement processes (Hoyt, 2000), which may as well take place outside secondary schools, for instance when children from diverse socioeconomic background interact with other institutional authorities. Nevertheless, it would be fruitful if future studies investigate further how socioeconomic background influences students’ perceptions of support in diverse settings.
Second, we have used the PISA items, which are frequently modified and utilized in international research investigating students’ views of teacher support. Even so, any future research aiming to capture individual perceptions could also compare alternative item wordings, for instance, “the teacher cares about the problems of students” vs. “the teacher cares about my problems” (Turner & Meyer, 2000). As might be expected, putting emphasis on the individual student may be more suitable to capture what their personal perceptions are (Göllner et al., 2018). Items which can capture how teachers provide support to individuals may shed more light on the validity of students’ individual perceptions.
Third, since classroom composition and teaching quality are likely to be confounded, we have included a number of classroom-level composition variables to account for this situation. However, we still have little
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knowledge about interdependencies between classroom composition, adaptive teacher behavior and individual perceptions of teacher behavior. A teacher has to judge the requirements of the entire group as a whole as well as the needs of individual students. Furthermore, it seems plausible that students do not evaluate teacher support independently of their observation of the teacher’s interaction with classmates. The questionnaire we use is not designed to capture these fine-grained nuances of teacher-group interactions and teacher-individual interactions. Although these issues seem hard to be solved in practice, it is important for prospective studies to better examine the role of classroom composition in shaping the teacher’s supportive efforts, as well as students’ perception of it.
3.8 Conclusion
The present study contributes to existing literature on teacher support as an essential element of instructional quality. We have placed special emphasis on students’ perceptions, which have been given very little attention so far with regard to students’ socioeconomic background. We have focused on the perception of three dimensions of teacher support (adaptive relief, patience with mistakes and social orientation). Moreover, we have tested how socioeconomic background indicators and prior achievement play a role in shaping these perceptions. Finally, we have connected these analyses by testing a potential interaction between prior achievement and socioeconomic background in predicting students’ perceptions of teacher support. We have found that there is a negative association between parental education and perception of social orientation dimension of teaching quality. We have also found that wealth had a negative association with the perception of adaptive relief and social orientation dimensions of teaching quality. The findings demonstrated that student ratings comprise essential information on the association between a student’s socioeconomic background and his or her interpretation of support in the classroom. It is notable that, although students have a modest amount of shared perceptions regarding how supportive their teachers are, they may vary in their opinions based on their socioeconomic backgrounds. By bringing together sociological and psychological approaches, we have illustrated how students perceive their teachers may have roots in the kind of socioeconomic context they were born into and raised in. By doing so, this study underlines the importance of considering background factors for improving teacher-student interactions.
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88 3.9 Supplementary material
Indicators Items Answers
Adaptive relief Our math teacher...
...gives good examples to make the tasks more understandable.
...assigns tasks according to the student's capability.
...makes the formulas very clear, that I can use them for new tasks.
...explains difficult parts particulary slow and carefully.
Patience by mistakes ...is also patient when he / she has to explain things several times.
...takes time for those who take a long time to understand something.
...also stays patient if a pupil does not come along
Social orientation How is your impression of your math teacher?
...always takes the time when the students want to talk to him / her about something ...cares about problems of the students.
...strives to fulfill the wishes of the students as much as possible.
Note. PISA 2003 Survey and authors' own translation from PISA-I-Plus 2003, 2004 Appendix A. Teacher support indicators and instruments
1= "strongly disagree"
2= "disagree"
3= "agree"
4= "strongly agree"
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4
Does what you get depend on who you are with?
Effects of student composition on teaching quality
Atlay, C., Fauth, B., Dumont, H., Decristan, J. (submitted). Does what you get depend on who you are with? Effects of student composition on teaching quality.
Learning and Instruction.
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Abstract
This study focuses on the association between classroom composition characteristics and teaching quality, with the aim of understanding the role of teaching quality as a mechanism underlying compositional effects. We also examine how teaching quality can be influenced by the student body that is taught. Multilevel analyses of a sample of 1,070 3
rdgraders have indicated that achievement-related and motivational composition of the classroom had an association with the classroom management dimension of teaching quality, whereas sociocultural composition did not seem to influence any of the teaching quality dimensions rated by the students. Correlations at the classroom level have also pointed at a relationship between the teachers’ and observers’ ratings of classroom management and the composition of general cognitive abilities and interest. As a contrast to student ratings, there was a significant negative correlation between the composition of students from low socioeconomic background and classroom management rated by the observers.
Our findings have shown that the student body represents a very critical “situational factor” which has to be considered while investigating teaching quality.
Keywords: classroom composition, sociocultural background, motivation, achievement, teaching
quality
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4. Does what you get depend on who you are with? Effects of student composition on teaching quality
4.1 Introduction
Students’ experience of their learning environment, and consequently their achievement outcomes, are significantly shaped by who is with them in their classroom. This was one of the fundamental insights of an influential study by Coleman (1966), which showed that the social composition of a school affects student achievement. Since then, different disciplines such as the educational sciences, sociology, psychology and economics have addressed these so-called composition effects in order to investigate the impact of class-aggregated characteristics on students’ individual learning outcomes, over and above the particular student characteristics at the individual level (Harker & Tymms, 2004; Thrupp, 1995; Van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010;
Zimmer & Toma, 2000). Although empirical studies have shown that the composition of the classroom may lead to different learning conditions and therefore may influence student performance (Driessen, 2002;
Goldsmith, 2011; Opdenakker & Damme, 2007; Peetsma, van der Veen, Koopman, & van Schooten, 2006), they have not paid much attention to the mechanisms behind this relationship.
One of the essential mechanisms in the classroom impacting composition effects may be teaching quality (Rjosk et al., 2014; Wilkinson, Hattie, Parr, & Townsend, 2000). Evidence suggests that classroom characteristics are likely to influence the quality of teaching, (Helmke, 2010) and less privileged students usually attend classes with lower teaching quality. However, these arguments are mostly supported by theoretical predictions or qualitative data (Gamoran, 1993; Oakes, Gamoran, & Page, 1992; Page, 1991).
The teaching quality literature shows that there is an association between high teaching quality and better student outcomes (Baumert et al., 2010; Fauth, Decristan, Rieser, Klieme, & Büttner, 2014b; Goodenow, 1993; Klieme, Pauli, & Reusser, 2009; Lipowsky et al., 2009; Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006). Yet despite the large number of research findings regarding the link between classroom composition and learning outcomes, as well as the link between teaching quality and learning outcomes, there is very limited knowledge regarding the relationship between classroom composition and teaching quality. So far, very few studies have empirically investigated whether teaching quality indeed differs according to classroom composition (Hattie, 2002; Rjosk et al., 2014; Rjosk, Richter, Hochweber, Lüdtke, & Stanat, 2015).
Researchers have not been able to clearly identify which characteristics of classroom composition matter the most. Such knowledge, however, is vital if we are to understand what role teachers’ classroom practices
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play for compositional effects on student outcomes and if we hope to address undesired compositional effects.
In the present study, we aim to shed light on the association between classroom composition characteristics and teaching quality. More specifically, we analyze classroom composition with regards to three sets of student characteristics (sociocultural, achievement-related and motivational) and their relationship to teaching quality in a sample of third graders. In doing so, we not only provide evidence of potential mechanisms underlying compositional effects but also contribute to research on teaching quality by investigating how teaching quality is affected by students.
4.2 Background
4.2.1 Definition of composition effects
In education research, the term composition effects (or compositional effects) is typically used to define the influence of student body composition in a school or a classroom on students’ academic performance (Baumert, Stanat, & Watermann, 2006; Van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010). Student body composition is usually operationalized by aggregating the students’ relevant individual characteristics.
Importantly, composition effects entail the effects of aggregated individual characteristics at the classroom or school level, over and above these characteristics’ effects at the individual level. These effects can be reported when the group-level aggregate of an individual-level variable independently contributes to the prediction of a change in the outcome variable (Harker & Tymms, 2004). For instance, a classroom composition effect would arise if two students with identical social and academic backgrounds were placed in two different classrooms with different compositions of students but developed differently.
It is surprising that despite the number of studies on this topic, only a few have attempted to examine the how exactly school or classroom composition could influence individual student outcomes (Van Ewijk
& Sleegers, 2010). Researchers have put forward several mechanisms to explain composition effects:
interaction between students, available resources of a class or a school, and last but not least, teaching quality (Harker & Tymms, 2004; Harris, 2010; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005; Wilkinson et al., 2000). There are reasons to believe that within the classroom context, teaching quality might be the most relevant mechanism, as it is most salient for students’ academic development (Wilkinson et al., 2000). We therefore focus on how the configuration of a classroom in terms of student characteristics can predict teaching quality. Before providing an empirical overview of the research on classroom composition and teaching quality, we present a definition of teaching quality below.
93 4.2.2 Teaching quality: A three-dimensional model
Teaching quality is conceptualized as a teacher’s actual conduct in the classroom along with teacher-student interaction (Brophy, 2000; Doyle, 2006). Many researchers have developed indicators for teaching quality (Allen et al., 2013; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000; Rice, 2003), and a number of studies suggest that there are three basic dimensions of instructional quality that matter most for student outcomes (Baumert et al., 2010; Fauth, Decristan, Rieser, Klieme, & Büttner, 2014a; Klieme et al., 2009; Lipowsky et al., 2009). These dimensions are classroom management, a supportive climate, and cognitive activation (Klieme, Schümer, & Knoll, 2001).
The first dimension, classroom management, includes classroom supervision and efficient time keeping. Teachers should provide clear and structured activities (Fricke, Ackeren, Kauertz, & Fischer, 2012) and keep student interruptions to a minimum (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1993). Classroom management describes a teacher’s strategies to maintain order as well as the students’ response to these efforts. It is “both a condition for students getting attentive (e.g., through teacher monitoring) and an indication of students being attentive (e.g., lack of interruptions)” (Praetorius, Klieme, Herbert, & Pinger, 2018, p.3). Studies have shown that effective use of classroom time through good classroom management is associated with learning gains for students (Borman & Kimball, 2005; Wang et al., 1993)
Second, we consider the dimension of supportive climate, which addresses the quality of social interactions between teachers and students (Curby, Rimm-Kaufman, & Ponitz, 2009; Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004). A supportive classroom climate is determined by characteristics of teacher-student relations, feedback from the teacher, mutual respect, and a proactive attitude towards student mistakes and misunderstandings (Baumert & Kunter, 2006). The concept of supportive climate involves the attentive and sympathetic attempts of teachers to address comprehension problems in the classroom while maintaining a caring ethos (Baumert & Kunter, 2006). A supportive climate may indirectly influence performance by enhancing students’ motivation (Klieme et al., 2009), for instance, by facilitating the feeling of relatedness in the classroom (Reinboth, Duda, & Ntoumanis, 2004).
The third dimension of teaching quality refers to cognitive activation, which describes teaching
The third dimension of teaching quality refers to cognitive activation, which describes teaching